← How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
Stop Running Out of Things to Say: 8 Topics that Ignite Flirty Conversations with Women
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Nothing kills a date faster than running out of things to say—and the awkward silence that follows. In this episode of “How to Get a Girlfriend,” dating coach and author Connell Barrett breaks down 8 great first-date topics that lead to free-flowing,...
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She learned that I hate mushrooms. Mushrooms are evil. Mushrooms are worse than Hitler. Boy, that's two Hitler references and one podcast about dating. That's. That's got to be a Guinness record. Welcome back to the how to Get a Girlfriend podcast. I'm your host, dating coach, and author Connell Barrett. I'm here to help you flirt with confidence, authenticity, make sparks fly, and get a great girlfriend. And I want to talk with you today about running out of things to say on first dates. Having the conversation lag, it is such a frustration. It's one of the most common sticking points guys talk to me about. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to talk about on first dates. The conversation just lags. And it's such a. It's such a depressing feeling. You know, you're on the date that's flatlining, but you're not sure how to get out of it. Well, today I want to give you eight great banter topics. These are eight topics you can have in your back pocket that you can talk about. Any. Any of them. All of them. Not all of them, probably, but many of them. And have first dates that go into that nice flow state where you and she are just bantering, vibing, bouncing around to two or three or four different topics. And that's the kind of date that makes a woman say, hey, when are we going out again? I'd rather you hear that than, hey, I'm just not feeling a connection. I want women saying, so, when are we going out again? What are you doing this weekend? I. I'm free. What about you? That's what I want for you. Here's a quick story. So I have a client named Martin who we were texting recently, and he came to me because he struggles to get those second and third dates. He gets friend zoned, you might call it. Women just don't want those second or third dates. And he recently had a date where he got the. The woman lowered the boom on him. He said, yeah, she just texted me saying she wasn't feeling it. And I said, okay, let's diagnose your date. What happened? And he said, well, we talked about our sick grandparents for 20 minutes. And I said, okay, that is not something you want to get bogged down in when she talks about a sick relative or her annoying boss or her ex or if you find yourself, oh, gosh, I've been talking about my, I don't know, tax taxes for 20 minutes. Don't do that. I once had a client talk about a Bad topic. I once had a client talk for 20 minutes about Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 Eastern military assault that Nazi Germany took upon the Soviet Union. That was a new one. When my client Brandon told me that, he's like, yeah, I talked about Operation Barbarossa. She zoned out. I'm like, yeah, maybe talking about Hitler on dates is not the best dating strategy. Just throwing it out there. So anyway, so I talked with, with Martin and I said, yeah, there's nothing wrong with if she, if she brings up a sick relative, fine. You don't want to deflect immediately and be rude, but you want to pivot toward what I call these eight great banter topics. And here they are. I'll just give you the eight great. These are first dates, especially because every guy, almost every guy, wants to get better at bantering at those good conversations. So here are the eight great first date banter topics. I'll bounce through these really quick, one through eight, then I'll go through each one, give you some examples of how you can bring these up. Number one is passions and hobbies, things that you both enjoy. Banter topic number two, pop culture. Think movies, music, tv, TV shows, sports. The third topic is travel. Good old fashioned travel. Almost every woman likes talking about that. Number four, food and drink. Food you love, food you hate. Strong opinions. Topic 5 is career. Each other's career. But there's a specific way to talk about your career. You want to talk about your career with some passion and emotion, not just dry facts and figures. Banter topic number six, fun what ifs. Fun hypotheticals. I'm going to take my jacket off. My jeans jacket is making this annoying clicking sound. I just realized, okay, fun what ifs. Topic number six, playful hypotheticals. You know, where would you time travel to? Who's your celebrity crush? Mary Kill. That kind of thing. Number seven, loved ones. Talking about the most important people in your life and her life, or at least some of those. Those most important people. That's a great topic. And number eight is your origin story, hers and yours. What you were like as a kid, what she was like as a kid. Talking about the past and youth especially. So those are eight great first date banter topics. You don't have to talk about all eight, but I do advise you to at least have this list in your back pocket, figuratively, on your phone anyway. And that way if you get stuck about what to talk about, you can just think, hey, which of these eight topics can I bring up? Because the whole issue with running out of Things to say and conversation lagging is it comes from two sources, either or maybe both. Either. You just literally don't know what good topics are. You just might not know what they are and then you get stuck because you don't know where to take a date. Now you've got eight topics that you will know where to take a date. Or the other thing that causes running out of things to say is you have a bar that's way too high for how good you think your first date conversation needs to be. You think, oh, I gotta be really witty, funny, amazing, charismatic and incredibly flirty. And that can raise the bar and put the pressure on you. And just like, I don't know what to say because you think you have to do stand up comedy or TED Talk caliber communication instead of just talking about these topics. So yeah, back when I was last single or when I was single for many, many years, I just basically toggled back and forth between these eight topics. Let's go through each one. I have a couple of stories from my dating past to show you how you might bring them up. So banter topic number one, passions and hobbies. What you both enjoy. Here's a question I advise you to ask every woman on every first date, pretty much, which would be, what do you love to do more than anything else? Or put another way, what lights you up? What absolutely lights you up? I love asking that question. And her answer will be a Rosetta stone. And helping you decode who she is and what matters to her. It can decode her as a person and it can also just reveal or it can also just make the conversation flow really nicely. Because if she likes, if she has passion for things, which of course she does, she'll want to talk about those passions and hobbies, whatever they may be. On my first date with my girlfriend Jess, we talked a lot about her dancing. She's a really good dancer. Like, it's like a, I don't know what you call it, modern dance or pop. Pop, pop, pop rock dance. Basically, like cool music, video dancing, whatever that's called. Jess is a great dancer and we talked about that because I wanted the date to go well because I was like, damn, this girl is fantastic. Talk about what is she like, what is she into dancing? And I knew that because it came up on in our texting before our first date. So we talked about her dancing. She. She took her phone out and she showed me some music videos she danced in. Not only is she super cute and showing the moves, it was just a great Topic that she enjoyed talking about, and the topic that we talked about that I enjoy talking about was my book. My book was out when I met my girlfriend and we talked about me as an author and writing. The topic of writing is something that we're both passionate about. So, yeah, be prepared to ask every woman, hey, what are you. What are you passionate about? Or what lights you up? What do you love to do more than anything else? And her answer will reveal something about her. I had a date once upon a time, and she's a painter. And I said, hey, what do you love to do? I mean, I. I guess I knew it. It was on her profile. But I think I asked her, so what do you love about painting? What is so powerful to you about painting? And she said, oh, when I'm painting. I mean, artistic painting. She said, oh, when I'm painting a mural, I. Time stops for me. Time just stops. And I just feel in my body and present and, yeah, that's like Zen for me. She told me roughly. And then what I did, this is an advanced emotional connection tool. But what I then did is I went into my mind and I thought, okay, I can't paint. I don't have any artistic ability. We can't connect about both being into painting. But I said to myself, okay, what makes me feel similarly? What makes me in my body and what allows me to feel like time just stops for me? It's doing improv comedy. And so I remember saying to her, oh, no way. I feel the same way the way you feel when you're painting. I feel that way about improv comedy. Time stops. The class is over, seemingly before it even started. And, oh, I'm so physically into it because improv can be very physically, not demanding, but can be very physical. And so here I am emotionally connecting with a woman who I don't have a lot in common with on paper. But emotionally, we're finding these emotional commonalities, and this is a bit of a more advanced emotional connection. Tip. I'm sharing with you, but if you want to really go deep with a woman on a first date, you basically say, what do you love to do more than anything else? What are you passionate about? She'll tell you and then ask her why or ask her, what? What does that thing do for you? How does it make you feel? What's the deeper why? And then the why she gives you will give you a little clue into who she is. And then you can find something similar in your life, if that makes sense, like I did with the Other woman. I mentioned the why for her was it makes my. Makes me feel present in my body and time stops. And then I just said, okay, what's something like that in my life? This is a really useful advanced flirting or not. It's not even a flirting tip. It's more about an emotional connection tip. And it's in my book because this allows you to emotionally connect with any woman because you may or may not have things in common, but you're going to be. You're going to have emotional commonalities with everyone on this planet. So. Okay, topic number two for. For great first date banter. Pop culture, movies, music, tv, sports. Not sure what to say, not sure where to take it. Just have a question or a topic ready about, hey, what are you addicted to on Netflix? Or talk about the favorite show you're watching. Or maybe music is in the air and maybe a song comes on the bar's speaker and you go, oh, I love this song. What's your favorite song? One of my favorite questions I used to ask on first dates was if it's karaoke night. Whether she's into karaoke or not, that's irrelevant. I would say, okay, let's say it's karaoke night. What song would you sing? The whole room is chanting your name. Amy, Amy, Amy. You take the microphone and you belt out what song? I asked that question many times. And then she'll take tell me what she does or would sing. Now we're talking music. Music is a great date topic. A great, great topic. Movies, music, tv, sports. Any of those things are great. I had a really great first date once. This is how simple a first date can be or how easy it can be. I had a really great first date once with a woman who I used to do improv with. She was in my. My musical improv class and we dated for a little while. Just like an improv fling. But I remember our first date. We talked about the Beatles for at least 45 minutes. Just turns out we both like the Beatles and we love deep conversations about music and the Beatles. We must have talked for 20 minutes about one song. There's a Beatles song called hey Bulldog. And she made the argument that that was the most underrated Beatles song. And we had a fun, lively debate about the Beatles. We basically talked about improv. And so that would be a passion topic. One improv. We have that shared passion. We talked about Beatles tunes. Oh, we talked about literature. She's very, very well read. Like she. When I was in her apartment, she had this Bookcase with like Tolstoy and, and who wrote Lolita, Nabokov and all these Russian great authors and yeah, so we talked literature, tv, music. Pretty much that's all we talked about. So that's an easy way to not run out of things to say. You just talk about fun topics that you and she both like talking about. And if you both enjoy movies or music that you can talk about that for the whole date or at least for a large chunk of the date. All right, next number three, travel. Great topic. The secret to talking about travel is just don't talk only about facts and figures. Here are the places I've been. Here is where I'd like to go. That's okay. You want to have a story? Bring this to your next first date. Bring your best travel story. What is a memorable travel moment? A crazy weird thing that happened to you? A near death experience? God forbid, I mean, don't get dark, but what's the wildest, weirdest thing that ever happened to you? Former client Craig from many years ago. This is pre pandemic. He had a great story about he lost his passport and he had to sneak back into the US from Canada by being rolled up in a giant in a big rug. And his friends rolled him up in the rug and put him in the back of a big SUV and they snuck him back into the US from via customs. I have another client, this guy Michael. Oh, this story is amazing. The story is so good I want to steal it for my own. Wonder if I can buy a story from him. Like Kramer, like, like Peterman buying Kramer's stories in Seinfeld. But anyway, my, my client Michael had this amazing story about being in Cuba and he and his friend were in Cuba and they spent all, almost all the money like down to the last few bucks by design. They wanted, they just wanted to spend every penny they had. And back then, I don't know what it's like now, but back then you, There were no ATMs in Cuba so there was no way to get money. There wasn't ATMs or there wasn't Western Union, but that was okay. They were about to leave the country and they, they had like 20 bucks. But then they found out there was some kind of 100 exit fee. Probably a scam. Not, not a scam but you know, some Castro rule and they couldn't leave the country. So Michael and his friend, turns out Michael's friend is a really good magician and they had to go throughout parts of Havana and do magic tricks from money street magic. And to get a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars worth of money from poor Cubans and they had to do it on a timeline because they both had had to be back in New York. So anyway, what is your wildest, craziest travel story? Or just something. It doesn't have to be a wild, crazy story. It can just be a favorite moment from a trip you've taken. Bring a story, bring a scene, bring a vivid memory from travel. That's a great way to talk about travel and ask her a good question about travel. Beware of only logical informational questions. Don't only ask her, where have you traveled? How many times have you left the country? Where have you been? Ask her emotion based questions. What moment from your European trip just changed your soul? Maybe I just made that up, but that's way better than where have you traveled? Right? Or here's a good travel question. What is the best thing you ever ate or drank while traveling? Man, that's a great question. For me, it would be. I took a Vespa tour. They have Tuscany ones on these red Vespas and just had some of the best pasta in the world. So travel. Great topic. Banter topic number four. Food and drink. Food and drink. Favorite spots. This could be your favorite restaurants, your favorite kinds of foods. Having strong opinions about food. Either way, love it or hate it is really good on a date because a woman wants to know how you feel about things. I remember on my first date with Jess, my girlfriend, we talked a lot about food. She's Italian. Well, Italian heritage, Italian family. She's incredible at cooking, so we talked a lot about food. I used to be a restaurant critic and she's an incredible cook. So we talked a lot about food, Italian food. We learned that we both love. Well, who doesn't love Italian? But we loved some of the same foods. I learned that she hates ketchup. She has a pet peeve about ketchup. She learned that I hate mushrooms. Mushrooms are evil. Mushrooms are worse than Hitler. Boy, that's two Hitler references and one podcast about dating. That's. That's got to be a Guinness record. And we just. Yeah, banter. What is banter, by the way? Banter can't. Banter is a lot of things, but banter can be as simple as two people having a nice light conversation about a light topic. That's all banter is. Don't need to be funny, don't need to be witty, don't need to do big fancy flirting moves. Although you can. You don't need to do those things, all you really need to do is just banter about these eight topics or. Or a selection of these eight topics. All right, number five, banter. First date, banter. Topic number five, your career, her career. You're thinking banter. Is that really a banter topic? Hell yeah. I mean, it can be depending on what your job is. You must have some funny work stories. Who's the biggest weirdo in your office? You could talk about that guy or girl. You can certainly talk about what you love or hate about your career. That's a great move. Great choice. Because women are drawn to men who are ambitious. Do you have career ambition? You could mention that that's an attractive trait if you don't have a lot of career ambition or if you've already achieved some wonderful things. Great. I work with a lot of very successful men. Talking doctors, sometimes finance guys. I worked with an Oscar winner. I worked with an Oscar winning screenwriter. Talk about a successful guy. I worked with a guy who coached one of the greatest golfers of all time. Very famous sports coach. So if you've achieved some cool things in your career, mention. Don't talk about the cool things in a resume displaying way. Talk about the cool things you've achieved in how it has helped you to feel fulfilled or even better, how it has helped you to give back back that is so attractive to humans, let alone women. My client, Jake, former client Jake is a big shot Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. And he used to brag like, yeah, I've got this boat and this car and I'm in Beverly Hills and that's a turnoff. That is a turnoff. Wealth and status is not a turnoff, but bragging about it is. So we made some adjustments and I had Jake talk about what his career as a plastic surgeon allows him to do to help people. Talking about the woman's nose who he made over and gave her her self esteem back. Or, or some. I think he. Once he, he does. I know pro bono is not the right term for a doctor, but. But free volunteer work doing surgery and procedures on children who are injured in fires. And as he was telling me about grafting skin on a young boy's face and giving that young boy a more normal appearance back, I just, I almost cried. I'm getting a little emotional right now, a little bit. And talking about what your career allows you to do to help other people, that's a really beautiful, beautiful thing. Also in terms of career, you might not have anything like that. Vivid. In terms of vivid storytelling, bottom line is Talk about your career in a passionate way, how it makes you feel, what you love about it. And ask her questions about her career that allow her to open up a little bit about what she enjoys about her job. If she does. You don't need to talk about career for very long if you don't want to. But it can be really, it depends on how into her work she is. A simple question would be what do you love most about your job? What do you love most about what you do? Her answer to that would be really interesting. Okay, number six, another great topic. Oz is really good Fun what ifs one of my favorites. Fun what ifs. Playful hypotheticals. Who would play you in the movie of your life? I asked many women that question. I've asked millions. Not millions, dozens of women. The desert island question. What's your desert island movie? Desert island TV show. You can bring one TV show, the entire show with you, but that's the only TV show you can watch. What do you bring to your desert island? See, now we're actually combining. I'm just realizing we can, we're actually combining some of these topics, right? A hypothetical what if about TV or movies. Boom. Now you're combining playful fun what ifs with pop culture that's really compelling conversationally to women if they like those topics. And that makes you a great conversationalist. Not by being incredibly witty, charismatic, amazing. Although you might be those things just by engaging her with fun banter topics. What other fun hypotheticals? This is a big strength of mine because, because I used to be a journalist and I used to do interviews for a living. So I'm really good at, practiced at asking thought provoking questions that people aren't used to hearing. In a good way. In a good way. What else? Time travel. If you could travel back or forward in time, when and where would you go? I think I know I asked just that at some point early on, maybe not the first date. Fuck Mary Kill is a fun one. Old school classic one. Two truths and a lie. You certainly know two truths and a lie from that being a prompt on lots of dating apps. It's certainly, it's a fun first date topic as well. That's a good get to know you topic. I, I enjoy two truths and a lie in person way more than on the dating apps because in person you, you can say them out loud. Okay, I'm going to tell you two truths and one lie and you have to tell me which thing I'm lying about. And that's fun because now she's reading your body language and voice and vice versa. And then some of these questions can go from bantery to even a little bit deep in a good way. One of my questions I like to ask was or is. Is was on a first date, what was the best day of your life? Or if you could go back in time and relive the best day of your life, what day would you choose? It's a positive question. So it's. It's generally enjoyable, but it can be deep. It can be deep. I remember one woman told me, oh, I go back to seventh grade because I was so close to my grandma. My grandma used to drive me to. To school every day. And we connected. And all of a sudden she was opening up about how close she was to her grandma. She's beautiful. I. And there were a few times I talked about the best day of my life. Best day of my life was my dad's 85th birthday party. My dad turned 85 on Halloween 2014, and I co planned his surprise birthday party. It was a Halloween party that my sisters and I planned together. And it was a surprise party. My dad was crying, all these surprise guests were showing up. Denny, Denny, Happy birthday day. And my mom, who was very sick and dying, she ended up passing a couple years later. But we thought it might happen sooner. I was just so grateful that my mom was still alive for that party. And that was the best, best day of my life. Best day of my life. And so I'm willing to go to that kind of vulnerable, real place now. I wouldn't do that in the first 15, 20 minutes of a date. Might be something to do in the second half or maybe even on the second date, but you certainly can get that deep if you want to. And that's where playful, fun, what ifs can lead. It can lead to more deeper conversations. Number seven, first aid topic. Number seven, loved ones, friends, families, pets. I remember I wasn't overly strategic when I met Jess, but I do remember thinking on our date she was sharing with me how close she is to her brother. She has an amazing, awesome brother, great guy named Aaron. And I love him like a brother. And. But I remember on my first date, I'm thinking, oh, boy, Aaron's important to her. So if somebody is important to this woman, then that somebody is important to you. Okay? At least, at least to learn a little bit about because, hey, who's in her circle? Close circle. You want to know about some of these people because that matters to her. And if you show interest in those people, that is a really good impression to make. So, yeah, we talked about her brother. She told a story about a scary car crash they had. Luckily, nobody was hurt. But a scary car crash story. She talked about cats. My girlfriend's into cats. So think loved ones, pets, best friends, who, you know, who she's closest to. And I remember on, on our date, I talked a lot about my old, old oldest sister, Kelly, who is the sister I was closest to. And she died a couple years last year, but she was alive when I met Jess and my big sister. We talked about, oh, you know, because I remember thinking, okay, I want to share something to let Jessamyn feel like, oh, boy, we have some things in common. We're really close to our siblings, but it was in an authentic way. And first date banter. Topic number eight, great topic, is your origin story and her origin story. Basically what you were like as kids. Have a story or two from childhood, whatever those stories might be. Funny stories from school. I have a story about I cheated on a test and got in trouble. I once faked back spasms to get out of a test. I had a tough time in high school. I did not like high school. And just asking her, so what were you like as a kid? What, what was the, what were you like in grade school? This is, these are great topics. Or sorry, this is a great topic because now she gets to open up about, oh, he's interested in me and who I used to be. That's very good. Boyfriend signal signaling to send. You're basically saying, hey, I'm really looking to get to know you. And it's also just typically very fun for people, generally almost therapeutic. But it feels good to talk about nostalgic happy memories. So you might talk about, you know, what were you like as a kid? Who was your best friend? What trouble did you ever get in trouble in grade school? You can start there and again, be ready to talk about this yourself. And this can actually segue into talking about innocent romance from youth. Hopefully innocent. You know, you can talk about first kisses. Who was your first kiss? You know, was it spin the bottle? Was it, you know, who was your first crush? So topic number eight, your origin stories can lead you to some beginning to talk about some fun, flirty stuff, dating adjacent topics like first dates, first kisses, things like that. And the origin story topic is a great way to be vulnerable. What is vulnerability in this context? To me, vulnerability is being willing to show a side of you that isn't necessarily going to come off as like it's not trying to Be attractive. It's being really open. But because it's about your past, it's. It's can be very innocent. What am I trying to say? Well, I was a fat kid, or at least chunky. You know, the redheaded kid in the movie Goonies. I looked exactly like that chunky redhead from Goonies. Almost exactly. And so on many dates, I would share a story or two about how my nickname in grade school. My name is Connell Barrett. My nickname was Corn Oil Bear Fat. And I was teased as being the fat redheaded kid. And I talk about the kid who teased me, this kid named Eric, and how he got fat in college and I got skinny and I got my revenge. So, yeah, I talk about being. I'm the youngest of six, and I talked about how I was a surprise. I'm the only ginger, only redhead in my family. And I was the youngest and also a surprise. So I call myself Miracle Baby a lot on dates, I would say. I remember being on a date with this incredible woman named Lauren. And I told her this story. I'm like, yeah, I'm basically a miracle baby. So if you could call me Miracle or Human Miracle MB for short, any of those things would be great. She loved it. The next day she's texting me, hey, Miracle Baby, how miraculous do you feel today? These cute little nicknames and, and just the two of us sharing moments can. Can come from any of these topics. And yeah. So, yeah, be ready to talk about what your origin story is and her. Find out about hers. Okay, those are the eight great first date topics to bring to a date. Again, I want to say something really important. Don't. Please don't feel like you have to talk about all eight. You don't think of these eight as a menu. Choose one or two or three as the date goes on. You don't need to choose all eight. No, no need. No need at all. Again, that Beatles conversation date I had, we all we talked about was pop culture and improv. So all we talked about for the most part was, was Passions, hobbies number one and pop culture number two. Maybe a little bit about families, but not too much. So those are the eight great topics. And if you just have this on your phone. Actually, you know what? I'm on Instagram a lot. The fastest way to reach me is on Instagram. You can DM me. My Instagram is if you want, DM me at dating transformation or email me connellatingtransformation.com and I will send you this little cheat sheet. It's literally a one slide thing on your phone that lists all eight topics if you want them. If you want snazzy little cheat sheet Number one Passions and hobbies Number two Pop culture number three Travel number four Food and drink number five Career number six Fun what ifs number seven your loved ones and number eight your origin story. If you just stick to any of these topics during a date, you're never going to run out of things to say and your dates will probably start going a lot better. All right, thank you so much for listening. Oh, by the way, I forgot the promotion. Go to datingtransformation.com if if you interested in coaching. I do one on one personalized coaching for men anywhere. I can coach any man anywhere as long as he wants to be coached. So go to datingtransformation.com if you want to and if you don't, that's cool. Not everybody wants to be coached. If you want some good free stuff, email me free book connellatingtransformation.com or you can DM me on Instagram at Dating Transformation at. I will zip you a free copy of my book Dating sucks. But you don't. All right, until next time.